Newsletter

SCAD Museum awarded NEA grant

The SCAD Museum of Art announced Friday that it received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for $10,000.

Called a "Challenge America" grant, the civic design award will fund research for the restoration of the Central of Georgia railroad depot behind the museum on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

The restored building will be called the Walter O. Evans Center for African-American Studies, in honor of the collector who donated a collection of African-American art worth as much as $10 million to the art college last year. The center will be one part of the SCAD Museum of Art once completed in 2009.

The depot, like much of downtown Savannah, was built with bricks made by slaves.

"We are delighted to be the recipients of (the award)," said Maureen Burke, director of the SCAD Museum. "The combination of African-American culture and Savannah's distinctive architectural legacy should produce some interesting urban design concepts."

The museum has undergone several restoration projects in recent years, including a 2003 structural analysis paid for by the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles.

The projects will result in Savannah's second art museum annex, which will feature galleries, a library, lecture hall and sculpture garden.